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i'm happy to be menu-planning again. if there are any specific resolutions that i make (and not the general ones i made a few days ago here on the blog), it's getting a better menu planning system. i haven't found anything to replace my handy-dandy notebook and pen with calendar system. i'd love an online database system that i can just add recipes to and it creates a shopping list for me. ironically, i'm married to a database and web systems developer. but i've already got his spare time filled up with looking for new blogging software.

any way...to kick things off, i thought i'd share this week's menu with you. one of these days, the menu planning system will include all three meals AND snacks. when i get organized.

and is it completely obvious to you how i crave big green salads in january? they're most expensive this time of year to throw together, but oh, how i crave them!

our area is suffering from the loss of natural vitamin D.

unfortunately, this vitamin plays a vital role in MY HAPPINESS.

the 10-day forecast shows snow-showers and cloudy conditions every single day. this means that we won't see the sun. and the sun makes me....happy.

joking aside...any suggestions on getting an extra vitamin D boost when the clouds and cold aren't helping? thsi is the tiem of year i need it most!

i never buy paper towels unless i'm forced to. i clean all the messes up with our kitchen towels and then promptly throw them in the laundry room (which is right off of our kitchen, so it's easy for me to wash a load every day).

kenny and my mother make fun of me and they covertly sneak rolls into the house all the time.

my mom buys cute towels for my kitchen to replace my ratty ones. i think this is part of their plan to force me into going the paper towel route. because i'm beginning to feel guilty cleaning up marinara or hot chocolate spills with the cute kitchen towels she buys. and admittedly, the ratty towels have a stench that won't clean out.

so. their plan has worked and i'm vowing to add paper towels to the "indespensible" list each month.

so. i need to know what brands are good...rolls that clean well and last long and aren't too expensive. because the expense in disposable towels is what has kept me from buying them all these years.

i was first introduced to audrey niffenegger's new book several weeks before christmas. since i fell in love with the characters in her previous book, The Time Traveler's Wife i was eager to see what this book would be like, story-wise. when i read the book jacket notes, i was very excited about reading it and asked kenny for it for christmas.

with the huge popularity of the twilight series and my complete boredom of them (i'm still about 50% through the first book and about to give up on it yet again, a year after having started it), i was beginning to think that my love of a good love story was waning. i couldn't feel any sort of love between bella and the vampire dude. i felt it was all so swoony and silly. and i just didn't understand why i couldn't get into the love story-ness of it while so many people who i admire loved it so much.

but then i find myself enticed by the ghostly print on the front cover of niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry and jumping out of my socks excited about a love story that takes place around highgate cemetery in london that hints at ghosts, and love-lost. the book came in the mail a few days before christmas. i wrapped it and opened it christmas morning, and began it the day after christmas. her second novel didn't disappoint. i may even say i loved it more than The Time Traveler's Wife. it's a bit on the quirky side, but that's what keeps it interesting. there is nothing cheesy about her characters, her writing, her story lines her one-liners. they are very realistic, yet not right-angled. they're full of regular emotion and human intensity, yet their lives are just outside any realm of reality that we experience. her books' characters deal with things like time traveling and ghosts appearing and odd sixth-sense experiences. those parts of her stories become real and while you find yourself describing the book to a friend, it sounds so foreign and other-worldly in your words spoken outside of the pages....but when you're reading it, it feels so normal. it feels as though these things are reality.

although we don't believe in spiritual hauntings and coming back as ghosts to haunt our loved ones, kenny and i jokingly promised to haunt each other after our deaths. i introduced him to one of my favorite movies, "truly, madly, deeply" when we were dating. the main character has lost her love and he comes back to help her move on from her catatonic mourning. she eventually does move on. i thought the movie charming and it contains one of the most heart-wrenching scenes i've ever seen (when alan rickman's character makes his ghost known to juliet stevenson's character). there is so much romance in hauntings...

i can't speak of a conventional haunting in Her Fearful Symmetry...you'll just have to read it to see what i mean. we can be haunted by past choices, decisions, events...not necessarily people who have left us. in fact, this book is bound to haunt my thoughts over the next few days as i unwrap the treasure that this story has been for me to read this past week. i will re-read chapters and re-introduce myself to the characters for the first time again. i'll fall in love yet again, and eventually i'll bring myself to read another book.

so...what books have moved you so deeply that you feel as though you'll never be able to enjoy another book ever again?

• blog more.
• get a new blog.
• play more boy games (that include pretending to be a monster or a dog, playing Mouse Trap 10 times in a row, and making a bigger effort to play in the snow for more than 5 minutes).
• put more dinners in the crockpot so as to open up that time slot in the day when all of us are cranky (3:30-5:00). we'll spend that time playing to keep from yelling at each other.
• write about all the mistakes i make along with all the fun parenting things i get to do on a daily basis. because being a human mom means i make mistakes. a lot. see previous bullet point which alludes to the fact that yes, i yell at my kids.
• write down my dreams. not my goals, but my actual night-time dreams. i have some real hum-dingers.
• sew more. for other people.
• knit more. for other people.
• complain less.